Music: The Sound Of Silence

...As performed by the band Disturbed. Yes, really. No, I'm not kidding. Seriously, listen to this thing.

The Stage Is Not A Crime Scene (Yet)

So there I was, watching the magic show. My eight-year-old niece, for reasons best known to herself, had decided that she needed to sit on my lap to watch the show. Secondborn (five years old) was in the seat next to us, with his Nana beside him and the rest of the family further down the row.

Up on the stage, the magician (who's really, really good) places his assistant (who's also really, really good) into an upright rectangular box, and rolls it around the stage, turning it completely around in the process so we can see that it has a solid back and isn't sitting on any trapdoors in the stage. For added verisimilitude, there are cutouts at (IIRC) the top left corner and the bottom right corner, so you can see one set of toes and one set of fingers from the assistant. (Wiggling, yet!)

Well, the magician then proceeds to slide metal sheets through the center of the box, from front to back along the vertical axis. It's the sort of thing where you'd expect him to split the box in half, and that's sort of what he does... except that instead of actually splitting it, he rotates two of the corners. The box has a central axis of some sort, and he swings the top left corner down and the bottom right corner up, turning the thing from a rectangle into a sort of cross or "t" shape.

At this point, while the magician is spinning the now-T-shaped box around so we can see it from all sides, that my eight year old niece, in a very distraught stage-whisper, bursts out: "He killed her! She's dead! He killed her!"

...And Secondborn, in an effort to be helpful and reassuring, pipes in with, "Dere's no blood! Where's the blood? How did he kill her if there's no blood?"

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there thinking, Damn it, Secondborn, quit telling people that my five-year-old son knows what a crime scene is supposed to look like!

Alarums and Excursions

The scene: Our lovely, lovely loft bed, this morning, slightly later than I'd normally get up except that I don't have to drop off the kids before I go to work.

Alarm: "BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-"

Beautiful Wife: "Oh, God."

Me: {Shuts off alarm}

Beautiful Wife: "ZZZZZZZZZZZZ..."

Captain Meowy-Pants Stupid-Alarm-Clock: "Meow? Meow? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!?MEOW!? MEOW!?MEOW!? MEOW!?MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!? MEOW!?

Me: "Oh, God."

Another Conversation About Baths

Me: "All right, Daddy is going to get into the bathtub."

Firstborn: "Okay."

Me: "So, if something goes horribly wrong and somebody needs help, where will you look for Daddy?"

Firstborn: "In the bathtub."

Me: "In the bathtub. If the Chitauri attack New York and the Avengers need someone to help them out, where will you look for Daddy?"

Firstborn: "In... the hot tub?"

Me: "In the bathtub. If giant monsters attack Tokyo and they're in need of help with a military solution, where will you look for Daddy?"

Firstborn: "I won't."

Me: "Are you saying I'm not military?"

Firstborn: "You have swords."

Me: "Swords are military."

Firstborn: "Swords are ninja." {pause} "...Or Samurai."

Me: "Fine. If you need ninja or Samurai--"

Firstborn: "In the bathtub."

Me: "Right."

Just in time...

So, we came back from our Christmas trip just in time to hunker down through an evening of tornado warnings. We're safe, but the last count I saw said there something like eight tornadoes and at least eleven deaths. There are also a lot of people without power... or, very suddenly, without homes. The footage is impressive, but... FFS, couldn't we have had snow, instead?

The Red Cross is helping the victims, and the Mayor of Rowlett is also suggesting donations to the Salvation Army. This is also a good time to donate blood, if you can. Update: Rhoadan points out in the comments that, actually, donating in response to a disaster isn't necessarily all that helpful, as disasters tend to bring in a huge surge in donations and the Red Cross ends up having to turn people away. Donating regularly, as frequently as you can, is a much better way to help out -- particularly because they often don't have enough donors when there aren't any obvious recent disasters.

They aren't asking for volunteers in the area yet, but I'm sure that will also become possible very soon.

We're also seeing a lot of heavy rain (and apparently there was some hail, last night) so there's potential for more storms, power outages, and the added threat of flooding, flash- or otherwise. If you're in the area, be careful and stay safe.

Music: Christmas a Ground Zero

A holiday classic:

Music: Dance Me To The End Of Love

Leonard Cohen: